Raytheon Common Ground System reduces risk of weather data gap

Raytheon Company's (NYSE: RTN) successful deployment of new backup ground station capabilities in advance of Superstorm Sandy significantly reduced the risk of losing critical weather information. The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Common Ground System's (CGS) two backup locations made critical contingency support available during one of the United States' most devastating weather events.

"Leveraging our unprecedented experience in ground station development and deployment, Raytheon built and established two critical capabilities in only nine months, enabling NOAA to protect critical weather information and declare Suomi-NPP (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership) an operational mission," said Bill Sullivan, JPSS CGS program director for Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems business. "Severe weather events are unpredictable. Recently, Superstorm Sandy caused mass power outages along the East Coast, confirming the need for contingency solutions."

Under NASA's authorization, Raytheon deployed a backup ground station at the Fairbanks Command and Data Acquisition Station, located at Gilmore Creek, Alaska, along with an emergency backup control center at the Raytheon campus in Aurora, Colo. These two locations are designed to ensure that meteorologists, emergency response teams and others will have critical weather data when needed.
Leveraging more than four decades of experience building complex ground systems to turn space data into actionable information, the Raytheon team worked diligently to design, develop and install these alternate ground system capabilities in preparation for required mission readiness exercises, and to ensure critical Earth, weather and climate information is protected.

About Raytheon

Raytheon Company, with 2011 sales of $25 billion and 71,000 employees worldwide, is a technology and innovation leader specializing in defense, homeland security and other government markets throughout the world. With a history of innovation spanning 90 years, Raytheon provides state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services. Raytheon is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. For more about Raytheon, visit us at www.raytheon.com and follow us on Twitter @raytheon.